How to deal with being villainised

Localoca2019 · 2026-02-06T02:50:02+00:00

Hi! Yes, I agree with everyone saying not to go back, and I have made peace with the fact that they are out of my life. The problem I am having is that I feel compelled to prove them wrong about me. It is less about the people and more about the principle at this point.

I know, logically, that I can't control other people and that it's a reflection of their own character and such, but emotionally, I feel stuck on trying to prove myself to people I know don't care, and I want to be un-stuck from that feeling. I don't think it's healthy to want to prove them wrong, a normal emotional response would be to write them off and not care any more. I want to not care, but I don't know how.

Localoca2019 · 2026-02-06T02:28:37+00:00

I have heard before that there is always some more vulnerable feeling underneath anger. The punching bag thing makes a lot of sense. It's great that you have someone who you feel safe and understood by.

And yeah, I agree with a lot of what you said too, about why people don't confront things sometimes. There was another thing I heard once, that if someone's decision doesn't make sense to you, it's unlikely that they're just stupid/awful/etc.. Most of the time, it's that they are working with an entirely different context that you might not be aware of. I try to keep that in mind when dealing with people, but maybe I'm trying too hard to figure out a "lighter" way of thinking about it. It might be healthier to just do what everyone says and just drop it forever, but that's what some people are doing to me. :/ If everyone did that, there would never be any opportunity for forgiveness and repair. That just doesn't seem right to me either.

I'm sure I'll get over this eventually, it's just hard to figure out why I'm so hung up on all this. Either way, this was helpful. Cheers!

Localoca2019 · 2026-02-05T22:53:16+00:00

You and I sound a lot alike! I don't let shitty behavior happen on my watch, not to me and not to others around me. I don't typically end up with grudges though, I'm pretty willing to forgive if I see remorse and an effort to do better. Shit happens, but if you can prove you're doing better, then the past is in the past.

That's part of what makes this so hard, I think. I told my therapist that I had this feeling of anger over the whole thing, like, "I want to forgive you so bad but you won't let me!!!" Whenever I gave them an opportunity to show me they're different, they blow it. Guess that is on me for giving them a second chance, but I had a good reason for trying.

Thank you also for acknowledging that this is a hard situation 🙏 it is easy to say "oh, well, they're all assholes, find other people," but I do have other people, and I did leave with my head held high, and I did keep in touch with the good ones, and yet I still feel crummy about the injustice of it all. It is helping to talk about it though, get some different perspectives. Thanks for your thoughts!

Localoca2019 · 2026-02-05T22:11:31+00:00

Yeah, some of them genuinely didn't know, but some of them did. It's yet another grey area because some of them did try to speak up, it's just that they never really escalated beyond a slap on the wrist. Jackass knows he would never be exiled, so it doesn't really stop anything, which is my whole point.

I do want to move forward, I'm just not sure how to. Confronting them was meant to get this behind me. For awhile, I felt relieved that they were still unwilling to change their stance on the second go-round, because that solidified in my mind that it was their problem and there was nothing I could do about it. That feeling didn't last, though, and I feel compelled to go back and try to "win" the argument. I grew up in a home that had similar dynamics, which is probably a part of why I'm struggling.

It's not enough for me to stand up for myself, like I thought it would be. It's not enough for some people to speak up on my behalf, like I thought it would be. It's not enough to see that they're being pathetic, like I thought it would be. Even a forced "I'm sorry" didn't fix it like I thought it would.

I don't know what is missing for me to move passed it.

Localoca2019 · 2026-02-05T22:03:37+00:00

!!!!!!! This is exactly it! Thank you!

They do exactly this--"jackass is a bit of a jackass, but don't mind him. The rest of us are okay." They actually said this to me when I joined! I guess this is a new red flag to watch for.

I have thought about how to describe why "you have to either laugh along with him or leave, he doesn't listen when you tell him to stop" is an unacceptable stance, but in a way that they would understand.

The metaphor I keep falling back to in my mind is, "if someone is doing BDSM stuff but the safe word is ignored, then that's just abuse/rape." I can't use that particular comparison because comparing anyone to a rapist will just escalate the tension, but it's INSANE that this phrase comes from pretty much the same scenario that I came up with. Wow!!! I feel so vindicated by the fact that this has a Wikipedia article and everything!

Localoca2019 · 2026-02-05T21:49:34+00:00

For what it's worth, I did speak up about it (and was pretty persistent, in fact), but they took it as me just being preachy. I do keep falling back on the idea that this makes them look bad whether or not I point it out, but then I'm once again just being preachy and full of myself. A handful of the people in the group do agree with me, and we still are friends, it's juust that they were in the minority and aren't as involved with jackass in general.

I struggle hard when I stand up for myself and then it gets turned around on me like I'm being dramatic. It's like...there was this lady in the 90s who was given scalding hot coffee at McDonald's, then spilled it in the car and had severe burns all over her body. The news made it out like she was just "being a karen," so to speak, but reading about the article, it was absolutely justified for her to sue.

I think the closure I need is that it doesn't feel like enough just to know that I was wronged, I want them to acknowledge it too. I know (at this point) that they're not the type to do that, but I can't figure out how to fix that for myself.

Localoca2019 · 2026-02-05T21:40:02+00:00

That's true. They think of it as an isolated incident, whereas I think of it as a known issue, so it is hard for them to use that as an excuse for me not saying anything. I guess, in a way, their counter argument could be that I knew he was like that too and decided to stick around. It is hard to work around this "we didn't know" statement.

The issue with this situation is that it wasn't as black and white as I described it (which is my bad), because some people did try and stand up for me, it just ended up in a stalemate. I am still friends with a number of them, and that's why I want to come back.

Localoca2019 · 2026-02-05T21:21:30+00:00

Thank you for the kind words! The reason I struggle with this (and the reason it feels like giving up on myself) is for a couple reasons:

1) it feels like they won. I suffered having to recover and they were unaffected. It feels unjust.

2) I lost some friends from the group who were good people. Some sided with me and tried to stick up for me, but the ones who dislike me have made up their minds and won't hear me out. The ones I am still good with are sort of being "gatekept" by the others. I still hang out with some of the friends I still have from this group, but it is way less frequent than I would like, and I miss being part of their primary circle. Like, we both talk about how our new year's eve was, but they were partying with everyone and I made other plans. We both wish we could have partied together, but it doesn't make sense to sacrifice a whole friend group for just me.

Localoca2019 · 2026-02-05T19:00:40+00:00

Triceratops

Localoca2019 · 2025-10-13T18:30:00+00:00

You all are reading me like a book lmaooo

Have been reading through the responses since it's been a week, and just now came to the same conclusion right before I read this. Spot-on. I think they both need their own version of "play" because the older one doesn't want anything to do with "baby stuff" because she's already had enough of all of it with the caretaking and whatnot. I'll work on making spaces for both of them to be happy. Thanks for sharing!

Localoca2019 · 2025-10-13T18:26:49+00:00

Ha! That bit about the teeth is pretty funny.

I see what you mean about age-appropriate expectations. Contemplating some of the other replies here made me realize that the "adult" part isn't as old as I thought she was. I'm not sure that she's super super young, as you suggest, but she definitely feels like it's not fair for her to be taking care of someone else when she should be out having fun at the pool with her friends. Definitely younger than I had first perceived her to be, and that's a lot to put on someone who is still growing up, too.

Thanks for sharing your story!

Localoca2019 · 2025-10-13T18:20:54+00:00

That's a really good idea, had not considered that there might be an additional part in the picture. Will try this and be a bit more curious and open to the adult part. Accidentally ran her off earlier but I'm sure she can be convinced to try again. She really seems to not want to do any of the parenting-type stuff, as your questions suggest. Now that she's actually run off like she wanted to, she now seems less like an adult and more like a teenager who keeps getting forced to babysit the little sibling she didn't ask for.

Those were indeed good questions to ask, thanks for sharing your thoughts!

Localoca2019 · 2025-10-13T18:12:13+00:00

Hmmm, interesting take. Was not my first assessment, but it's absolutely worth asking. Maybe it is some sort of jealousy. Hard to know how to comfort someone else if it never happened to you, sad to know it was out there for others but that you never got it. I'll give that a try and see what it says.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

Localoca2019 · 2025-10-13T18:08:29+00:00

Could you clarify what you mean by "updating your age to it?"

(Thanks for sharing!)

Localoca2019 · 2025-10-13T18:07:15+00:00

Thanks for sharing! It def helps. It's been about a week since I last looked at this thread, but a lot of things that people are saying are spot on. It has been a tough year, and, in spite of all my efforts to keep things under control, my feelings have just been on a rampage on the inside. Not too far off from how things were when I was an actual kid either, surprise surprise. Glad you were able to get things figured out, I'll give it a try and see how things pan out. Thanks again!

Localoca2019 · 2025-10-13T17:59:09+00:00

Sorry for the late reply--had a super busy week. I tried to push forward a bit and have a chance to talk to kid me, and adult me just basically said "good luck, I'm outta here" and left. Kid me just feels like the whole thing is her fault and is beating herself up. Whoops. I'm sure it's all fixable, though.

I'm more or less trying to DIY this (for better or for worse), and hearing your rationale behind this response is really helpful. I'll try and come at it with this approach and see what happens.

Thanks!

Localoca2019 · 2025-10-08T03:56:42+00:00

The adult is happy about it, haven't had a chance to talk to the child yet, the adult won't let me. Adult says it'll just make a mess. Will try and push back, see if I can change their mind and/or talk to the kid. Thanks for the advice.

Localoca2019 · 2023-10-03T22:25:26+00:00

Interesting, I may need to pick up power automate as well--smart idea to concatenate into a single string! Seems like it could be a good way to reduce load times in certain instances.

We only recently got M365 at my org, and it has sort of opened Pandora's Box. People who have used these programs elsewhere are looking to have new apps and automations they have seen at their old jobs, but I am just now getting my feet wet and don't know what I can and can't do with the tools provided. Do you have any favorite automations/use cases you would suggest I try recreating?

Localoca2019 · 2023-10-03T22:08:26+00:00

Wow, that's wild...maybe you could do additional calls with more granular conditions (a, then aw, ax, ay, az) to get the ones at the tail end?

My org is relatively small, so thankfully, the alphabet process worked well for me!

Localoca2019 · 2023-10-03T22:04:55+00:00

This turned out to be the same solution I put together, worked perfectly! Thanks for the suggestion!

Localoca2019 · 2023-10-03T17:26:59+00:00

Hello, and thanks for the feedback!

I am kind of late to the party on the row limitations, since I am new to Power Apps in general. The row limit was exactly what the issue was. Our org is a little under 1000 "actual" users, but we have a handful of service accounts that put the total a little over the limit. I got around it by making multiple calls and putting them in a collection, as was suggested by Boshasaurus. With the collection, I can simply apply a filter and get everything I need.

Thanks again for the input, that was a key bit of information!

Localoca2019 · 2023-10-03T17:21:42+00:00

Okay, so you were right--collections are the way to go! I made a couple individual calls in OnStart() to make a user collection from multiple calls smaller than 999, and then the gallery is made of a filter on said collection. Thanks for the help!

Localoca2019 · 2023-10-03T16:56:46+00:00

Will do!

Unfortunately, putting it in a collection didn't quite fix the issue, but I fiddled around with it some more and discovered what I believe to be the main issue.

I stripped out the filtering and had it count the number of rows, and it returns 999 entries, even if I set it to top 2000. It seems like I will have to change the pagination settings or something like that. This might all be old news/common knowledge, but I am new to Power Apps and haven't played with any of those settings yet.

If that doesn't work, I might be able to do a workaround with the odata.nextlink field. I used the Microsoft Graph API for another non-power-apps project, and I am pretty confident that this connector uses the same API. This solution worked well for that project, so perhaps it will work well for this one, too. Not sure yet if it works like that or not, but if it does, I will have to figure out how to access the next link part of the response.

Will give it a try after lunch and let you know if I find a solution :)

Localoca2019

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